Is HIVE Content Bad? or Is There No Incentive To Make Good Content?
Hello SPIers, this evening I have spent the past 2 hours scrolling through the content on the peakd frontend and it's fairly boring. Looks like auto upvotes are the main motivation to post and AI is "helping" alot of people.
It takes me a few minutes of scrolling and searching to find something half-interesting worth reading. If im honest, im not interested in reading anything HIVE-related are any sort of daily blog like dinner/travel/ crypto journey. We all see daily bloggers get 600 upvotes and 2 comments from people tagging tip bots. There's almost no interaction and this shows not alot of other people are interested in this content.
On other long-form blogging platforms such as Reddit, the main post is the starter, like a jump-off point and the comments are where it becomes social media. The main post could be a 10k word thesis are a 10-word question. The interaction is the incentive. When you post on Reddit, you value comments, views and stickers.
On HIVE, a large number of people upload low-effort content to collect auto-upvotes and people dont leave comments because they dont pay and mostly go unanswered. Comments and views are rarely checked. The post-payout is the incentive.
From my POV, you cant hold it against people for wanting to make a few dollars. As I scroll through Peakd, I wonder why long-form content is presented as short-form, like Facebook posts. Surely long-form content would be much better suited to a forum-style layout. BTW, no hate on peakd, I've been using peakd solely for 4-5 years.
I hear the DHF is costing us $3M a year but we cant pay to contract some independent coders to build an algorithm that would be to pick and promote original content. Same for SMTs and marketing.
Shit giveaway $3M of HIVE a year to onboard people directly and that would be the best use for it. $10 oh HP when you sign up, $30 after 6 months and $60 after a year. Make simple rules like, x amount of posts for the month, x amount of comments, no powerdown, etc. There you go, 30k new users. Even if only 10% complete, that doubles our active user base and how many of these people will buy HIVE as well? I'd bet my bottom dollar they'd collectively buy over $3M worth of HIVE. Nah, better to have a Rally car.
This would require some form of KYC to stop abuse so not for everyone but its just a fart idea im typing as im thinking.
Anyways, moving on from DHF money being wasted and to wrap up the post.
Im more confused now than I was when I started writing this post. When I started writing, I was thinking, the content on HIVE is shit. Now im thinking, there's no real incentive to make really good content on HIVE because you're not rewarded for quality so you cant blame people for not making high-effort content when they dont have to.
Getting Rich Slowly from June 2019
Token Name | Main Account | Link to hive-engine |
---|---|---|
SPI token | @spinvest | SPI |
LBI token | @lbi-token | LBI |
Top XV token | @spinvest | XV |
Eddie Earners | @eddie-earner | EDS |
EDS miners | @eddie-earner | EDSM |
EDS mini miners | @eddie-earner | EDSMM |
EDS-vote | @eds-vote | n/a |
EDS DOLLAR | @eds-d | EDSD |
DAB token | @dailydab | DAB |
DBOND token | @dailydab | DBOND |
RUG token | @rugem | RUG |
You make some interesting points. I would like to know how many people have actually been on boarded to HIVE as a result of our current and past marketing strategies, as I agree that most content on the front page is shit.
Not to throw shade on anyone trying their hardest or anything, just saying I never find anything I enjoy outside my favorites, and even then it gets scarce.
In my honest opinion HIVE is still too much hassle for people who are accustomed to the ease of mainstream social media. It requires too much personal accountability and foresight. Our token isn't traded on U.S. exchanges, so the quickest & easiest way to get it that I've found is to buy LTC, and swap it via Hive Engine. That's an incredible leap for a newcomer to a blockchain environment. So, I do see how there could be a benefit to getting them here by giving them $$ to figure out how to get out, especially if they're also incentivized to stake the majority of it. I think this deserves further discussion.
Edit to add I'm thinking of a training program that pays to learn beginning with small things like verifying, staking/unstaking, encrypted memos, up to bigger things like successfully starting/maintaing a community or launching a token, giving them a chance to decide along the way whether or not to take what they've gotten and go or doubling down and reinvesting, until they've had ample time to really see what's here, and bring some friends.
I pretty much agree with anything in your comment.
A HIVE "academy" with rewards would be a great incentive. Rewards based on performance. Thats proper forward thinking and a proven model on other platforms.
How would we flesh something like that out and implement it? Honestly, if we're spending money in the millions for marketing, I feel like something like this would go way farther, with a lot less. We should hash out a trial run and figure out how to experiment with it.
I guess first thing would be a free account* that is verified on creation and rewarded with enough of a sum to get people's attention, but staked. As the new user completes tasks to learn they earn liquid.
Set up clear save points where the user makes a decision to leave with what they have or stay to earn considerably more. We don't want to make a system vulnerable to hit & run abuse or exploitation, but we want newcomers to feel like they can leave at anytime and get honestly rewarded for their time & attention spent. The crypto environment is notoriously riddled with scams, so making sure they feel safe and in control is imperative.
*I haven't used it, but I hear Leo has an easy Lite account sign up process we should try to use or mimic.
Gamify the experience as much as possible. Make each opportunity to stay or go feel like leveling up. Do you want to burn the experience and call it game over or get new toys to increase your earning power? There are a lot of tasks that can be performed to gain experience.
A few that come to mind after the ones above are things like, staking HBD, setting a Peakd beneficiary, delegating HP/RC, using various sidechains for swaps, research and invest in a Hive Engine token, staking to another account, taking control of their own account (incrementally), posting on the experience, of course (which will be manually reviewed and upvoted/curated), and more stuff I'm not thinking of right off the top of my head.
Always pay out rewards 50/50 liquid/staked but offer to match interest earned by x2 or x3 if they power up the liquid portion. Set it to where at the end of a month, if they follow the game plan, they have a few hundred $$ they can cash out, or graduate by taking full control of their account, changing the keys, settling in, & moving on to recruitment, NOT SHILLING*.
*During the last major bull run I learned something about people. No one cares how cool you think something is or how profitable it is for you when you're trying to sell them on something new & scary. As soon as they realize there isn't a wheel barrow overflowing with money for them en route, they're lost. The idea of giving them money inside a puzzle they have to solve to collect seems like it could have a lot of potential.
Anyone have anything more to add? I'd like to keep discussing this.
Some good ideas here.
Aside from the gamification aspect, we've done a lot of these things through the Saturday Savers Club on the @eddie-earner account. We're just now planning for 2025 which will launch on 4 January 2025. In fairness, there have been other initiatives, too, over the years.
It's taken four years to build the Club, but we're ready now to bring new comers to Hive. I did some workshops at a Conference in June where there was a lot of interest and which helped me understand what people needed to get started. I'll be running a couple of online workshops with a community I work with leading up to the next Launch.
I'm also progressing another idea for a readers and writers community, with an emphasis on bringing more readers/consumers/curators to Hive.
Your ideas make a lot of practical sense. I like the concept of a reward based puzzle game, that leads people deeper into engaging with the platform while learning, yet designed to keep out the pure milkers (the hardest bit id say)
I’d like to invite you to come discuss ideas like this further at a new show on hive discord that @peaceandmoney and @shadowspub and myself will be doing this coming Wednesday. It is designed to be a casual chat and chew on ideas just like what you are talking about here!
If you are free i hope you consider coming to say hi,
The Crypto and Cola chat,this Wednesday at 8pm UTC and you can find us in the Official Hive Discord server. A link to the server is right here ----------> https://discord.gg/uzg4Aedf.
I'm not sure what tomorrow looks like yet, but if I'm free I'll try. Just be warned this isn't really a fleshed out idea or anything, just thoughts off the top of my head.
Personally, my comment game is quite strong, but you make a good point about most of the other posts on here. Mine are top notch though, lots of humor and good food and all the interesting facts about my life that no one should care about, but they clearly do. I'm kidding. I blog more for myself than I do for anyone else. The rewards don't hurt though!
You dont get a 80 rep from not commenting and being active 😁
Everyone says rep is irrelevant... 😀
I always look at a person rep score. Gives an idea of how active/long your been on the platform.
I agree. I was just being funny. I'm quite proud of my 80. I came on right as the bid bots were dying, so I think that definitely says a lot about my account and activity.
Some of my Hive posts are just cookie cutter things, like my Hive Goals posts. Others I put more work in than I should. My haiku translation posts, for instance. There is a lot of expertise in those posts. The translation, explaining all the cultural references, following them along to previous Japanese or Chinese poems, etc. And those posts... get almost no interaction. In fact, my cookie cutter posts usually get much more interaction. I kind of don't mind, to be honest. I mean it would be nice to get some good interaction, but also I kind of write them for myself, because I am interested in all this stuff.
But still, it points to a few problems on the reader side. 1) Readers can't find things that they want to read. Hive needs a better way to organize things and a better way to expose things we might be interested in. 2) Many readers can't be bothered. They only half read articles, comment quickly in order to gain attention, then they go and use AI to quickly make a shit post to collect autovotes. We have very very few read consumers on Hive.
I agree, very few actual readers. I myself skip through posts to the meat and I listen to posts I want to fully consume.
It's not easy putting alot of effort into a post knowing it'll not get much traction while knowing you could bang together a 20 min post for some reward so fair play to you 😁
Far too many posts are simply posted to farm their community's auto-voting rewards. Some communities are worse than others for this. It's a shame but perhaps it's the way Hive is organically moving. It's difficult setting rules but certainly, I'd like to see some form of KYC to at least cut down on the number of fake accounts, spammers and farmers.
Best wishes and great post :-)
Im guilty of farming autovotes but everyone that posts is I guess, lol.
As someone who operates a few projects, I'd love to be able to monetize HP. Personally, i'd have no problem with KYC but HIVE would die if it were introduced, lol.
Thanks for checking out the post and dropping some feedback.
There's just not enough incentive to add variety to content around here or to drive content creation higher. Once the upvotes became automated, any shitpost people make on the receiving end of the list gets voted on. One can add some extra requirements like word count, but eventually people figure out how to automate their templates there and it's a cycle. If I had to compare it to other platforms that monetize user content, it's either people get good at it or get nothing. But because our system enables us to get something even contributing at no value, this is the end result.
I pretty much agree with anything you've written there. We're stuck in a cycle and there's little we can about it.
what parameter do we use to define good quality content anyway? As far I know most of the cases are about how close you are with big fishes, the rest are more like a randomized one.
It does not mean there isn't any good ones, but those can not be defined without subjectivity and personal preference.
I think for this platform good quality content is determined in large part by community engagement. If a lot of people are engaging in the comments it's quality, yes?
then for a big one who love to upvote their commentators, smaller fishes will come there to comments for getting votes and the posts become better quality? Bigger holders will be able to make better quality contents than new ones, because this perspective saying that to one of the way to increase quality of the post is by holding bigger HP and upvoting people who come commenting the post.
everything has their own pros and cons.
I think a good parameter for quality content would be engagement. Which is better content?
5000-word, well-researched and detailed post about whatever subject with 4 comments and no reblogs
vs
50-word paragraph that is controversial with 50 comments and 6 reblogs.
Surely the 50-word post is better content because of the engagement and its having more direct connections with users.
I used to write very detailed posts about silver stacking but in 2017/18 and one day I had no time, so I wrote 1 line "Here is today's Silver Post" and added a single picture of a silver-coloured pole. It got 3x as many comments and about 4x my post payout.
I dont know, maybe im talking out my 🫏hole
The way Hive works and the way some whales act is what makes these things happen. In reddit, people post what they want to post. They ask questions, they get answers, they post stuff that many people will not agree with, etc. It doesn't matter if you just created your account or if your account is 10 years old and posts a lot. It's the post itself that will attract attention, not the account posting it.
In hive we have much less people. So the incentive is not to get answers or the interaction via comments. The only incentive is getting some money. Here it matters if you're well known or not. An account that was just create or even an account like mine that has 3 years and has posted a lot but mostly on Splinterlands, can make the best post in the world and it won't be as rewarded as a post by someone very well known. Comments also rarely get upvotes so why make them? And when the incentive is just to make some money but there are people who can take it all away with one clock on a DV, it drives even more people away.
Comments are a way of building your network, of starting relationships with other accounts who will get to know you and your posts with the potential of voting for them. It's how you get known.
That might be true but the comparison with reddit still remains, where the comments happen naturally but they're also not needed for engagement in your future posts. If they are good they will get upvotes and comments.
I understand what you are saying but reddit is not the same thing. Hive is about an experimental approach, it is about how would/could things work in a decentralised environment. How do we build alternative economies?
Most content on Hive is bad it's boring and no one cares that's why Hive is where it is
Hive has a lot of problems 😔
We agree
I've been getting downvoted for helping out a friend year's ago who is now exposing the truth about Hive
I create 💯 original content daily on Hive I'm also active on Instagram everyday @kgakakillerg
It seems the value plan proposal is missing in action, but I agree: for the amount of money that has been spent on these initiatives, I don't understand why we haven't commissioned a professional marketing agency ... or several.
DFH gives away 3-4% of HIVE's total marketcap a year! for almost nothing in return. I'd say $500k is money well spent and the rest is ego driven projects. Zero marketing and onboarding is really being done.
Yeah, it boggles the mind why
The quality of the photography in the blackandwhite and photographylovers communities have improved a lot.
And a lot more engament also, that's a positive!
We have a few sound communities, the silvergoldstackers community comes to mind where they kinda do their own thing and engagement is high. They are like chicken teeth, lol. I'd guess food would be high engagement as well because people like to share tips.
Quality is very variable on Hive, but then we have a pretty small community and have not attracted the sort of creators we really need (for various reasons). I do find some great stuff though. There are some comics and music I enjoy, some of it from real professionals. I am mostly posting for fun and I get some nice engagement. I will use my votes and comments to encourage the stuff I want to see.
Yeah, its cause we have a small exhausted community. 5% is good, 95% is 💩
I spend hours reading comments on Zerohedge and other sites, not so much on Hive anymore. If Hive had more breaking news stories it would be more interesting to me.
What? people using AI to write an article about "insert title" is not interesting to you?
Making KYC a main point defeats the point of being based on a decentralized blockchain and we’d become just another site for blogging. We’d gain some but would also loose some too. The market is voting and right now we are loosing slowly. Some people get upset when this is said but there’s a reason we are down over 50% in Hive price past 12 months while many crypto’s are up same period. It’s truly become the norm to just post whatever daily for many so they get there daily vote. I see it brought up in multiple communities discords. I always say if u don’t have a post today who cares but clearly many just mail it in. One things for sure most of what the DHF is funding is crap. Who’s voting for some of this stuff? Whales who benefit? Though community is small we do have many great solid accounts! But I can’t disagree with the criticism. I have my own criticisms also.
Whales are stronger than ever as well.
I don't think of HIVE as decentralized anymore. The power whales have means they decide what our fate is. If HIVE were 1 account, 1 vote, it would be decentralized. Many approved DHF proposals have fewer votes than the return proposal.
The KYC thing was just the first way I could think of to stop the abuse of a promotion idea explained. I understand adding KYC to HIVE would be the last nail in the coffin.
I dont have alot of hope for HIVE in 5-10 years time if we cant move on from being a blogging platform into something else involving SMTs. But thats the dream. lol.
Checks for checking out the post and feedback some good feedback.
!PIZZA
$PIZZA slices delivered:
@danzocal(5/10) tipped @spinvest
@spinvest thanks for this post. I spotted it yesterday and read the first paragraph, got side tracked and then couldn’t find it again. I just spent the better part of an hour trolling the most viewed page looking for it again to finish reading.
I’m not here to talk shit on the 3million being spent by DHF and how effective it is… i can be skeptical, but truth is i dont know enough to really say.
I do however think that the ethos of hive is meant to be decentralized, and trusting in the literal Hive mind seems at most essential, at least obvious.
To me taking solid ideas from the community, creating some polling to vote on the ideas and actioning a few of them with small experimental DHF/Value Plan budgets seems a clear ‘why not’
I mean, if hive was a crazy success with new users clamouring at the door, all due to the brilliant use of the DHF, then perhaps community sourced ideas could be ignored or swatted away like pesky flies. As it stands though, maybe it is time to look inward and really become the chain that mainly posts already claim to be.
Your idea of a staged earnings entrance based on time on chain and output/activity seems worthy of a trial. Not even so costly and even with a potential payback. Again “why not” give it a trial.
Listen, This Wednesday at 8pm UTC a few of us are starting a weekly chat on the Hive Discord to discuss all things hive and crypto, and discussing these kind of ideas are exactly what we are seeking. It will me @peaceandmoney @shadowspup and myself there for this wed.
Maybe you are too busy or its not your thing, but if even remotely interested id like to invite you to come join us on our first go of… - The Crypto and Cola chat, it will happen this Wednesday at 8pm UTC and you can find us in the Official Hive Discord server. A link to the server is right here ----------> https://discord.gg/uzg4Aedf.